Reaching the semi final in a convincing fashion should give Southgate enough credit not to be fired after the first minor disappointment and inevitable tabloid attack on him.
This is a very promising squad that doesn’t even feature the likes of Jadon Sancho yet and Southgate is capable of organizing the team. The football they played is a step above anyhing i’ve seen from England in over a decade. Give the man some time and they should be great when the next European Championship comes around.
I don’t know man…the only game where England looked comfortable was against Sweden.
Against Colombia it was a scrap and we almost lost.
Croatia benefitted from some dodgy refereeing but that just gave them an edge, not the victory.
That they got by themselves.
I do think though that at this level the margins are so very very tight.
France will lift the trophy.
Fitting really that 8 of the 9 Spurs players in the semifinals will now be playing in the 3rd place consolation match.
Based on being Spursy, bet both lungs on Croatia to win it all. Sorry Hugo!
Gutted!
The England / Croatia game was so different from the France / Belgium game. England and Croatia (especially Croatia) seemed to advance the ball much more aggressively then France and Belgium. I don’t usually watch football so I don’t know what typical play is like. I do agree that the refs seemed to let Croatia play dirty.
I was kinda hoping for a France vs England cup while I’m in France. Go France!
I aint even mad, I am used to losing :)
I stand by my view Croatia will win the thing and good for them.
Feels like observers out there keep expecting Croatia to finally be served out of the tournament, and they just keep winning.
Big question: do they go back to the Purina checkerboard shirts for the final?
In Croatia’s first match of the cup, Niko Kalinic was asked to sub in at the end of the team’s match against Nigeria. Kalinic – upset at being left out of the starting 11 – said his back was bothering him and refused. Team sent him home, and has been playing with just 22 players, rather than 23.
Imagine being Nikola Kalinic right now.
Apparently England only brought red shirts and white shirts, so Croatia went their 2nd kit. I assume the final will be blue vs Purina.
Croatians have been in their dark alternates for the majority of the games. Only game I can remember their distinctive unis in was the first match against Nigeria.
Even against Argentina, they wore the darks. Maybe it’s a superstition now, but if France wear their bleus, going to be hard to allow Croatia to wear that kit.
LOL.
Also, a day late
That whole match was so tense. When Croatia equalized, the game just became nuts. The energy from the Croatian players, and the scrambling panic from England made me so nervous. When Croatia finally went ahead with only a few minutes of Extra time left, I started praying for England to equalize, but it never came. Wow, that was emotionally draining.
Scrambling panic sums it up well.
Good game, have to agree Croatia was pretty chippy along the ankles but overall they had more spunk. Sweden let England stand around and pass it to unmoving players in the midfield all day, but Croatia had those nice cycling midfield swirls that make a mess of defence and creates opportunities. The only danger England could create in both of the last games were from headers, and from the deep outside wings where it was mostly quarantined despite the energy.
It’s pretty subdued here at work this morning but there’s a cynical part of me that is glad the more nationalistic elements of the UK don’t get to walk around with an oversized opinion of their country right now.
Gotta say though, as a hockey longtimer, this whole 1 game-per-country format makes it really hard to judge who the the better teams really are, as the play styles are so different between rounds. A best of three, at the very least, would allow some in-between game strategy adjustment and ramp up the animosities and tensions. Seeing as the game scores are so low, and most goals coming from the tip of a flying toe or a header from a scrum, the outcomes seem fairly fluke-y. Whereas in hockey, game 7 of a series against your opponent, with hundreds of shots on and higher scores, you tend to know it was a battle whose attrition is showing you the best team, and not who managed to get their lucky scalp in the right place for a split second.
Dear God, no.
Meanwhile…
https://twitter.com/GregFarrimond/status/1016729311032889347/photo/1
“And Fellaini.” That’s cold.
Both you and @ChiTownBluesFan (I think) have proposed changes based on watching Ice Hockey, but one thing you have to remember is the time pressure. Finishing the World Cup within approximately one month is important. Also, in ice hockey you have limitless substitutions, which makes the games quite different as players can be rested during the games.
Just in this world cup, you had players severely cramping up and being unable to walk near the end of extra time. That endurance is a big part of the game. But allowing a few days rest between games is also important to give the players a chance to recover. So that’s why I don’t think multiple game series are possible, or ending penalties. Not without changing the game.
Besides which, I kind of like the idea that on any given day, a fluke can happen and an unexpected underdog can win. Especially through penalties. That makes everything even more fun and dramatic. And being fun and dramatic should be a bigger (or at least equal) goal for the World Cup (in my opinion) than determining the best team in the World.
I guess my idea of good drama is based on a build up of history and story, with luck being a result of opportunity and talent, not random dice rolls, but I get what you’re saying about the substitutions. I’ve played lots of league hockey and soccer and my legs definately felt soccer more the day after.
There is plenty of underdog winning in hockey though, usually via the goaltender, who on an exceptional night can frustrate the entire rest of the team, but also when per-player chemistry suddenly clicks. Lucky goals happen all the time in hockey but they’re rarely championship definers like in soccer, just fun things to watch in the replay.
Basketball is at the opposite end of the spectrum for me and why I don’t enjoy watching it; the odds a team can come back from a deficit are so low that unless a game is tight all the way thorugh, you can call the result at halftime and go home.
Well, look at the result of previous World Cups. There’s a reason why Brazil, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay are the small list of countries that have won the World Cup at least twice, and the only countries to have won them once aside from that is England, France and Spain. If the World Cup wasn’t a build up of history and story, with luck being a result of opportunity and talent, I think you would see a much wider array of winners. Whatever luck or random bursts of talent happen in individual games in the World Cup, overall they seem to balance out. You can’t get lucky that many games in a row unless it is based on talent.
